Christmas day was very fun. My oldest daughter had come home from Grad school to spend her vacation with us. In her new found excitement in the Lord she was decorating coffee cans and putting slips of paper and small pencils in them. She wrote ‘Prayer Requests’ on the front of the cans and put them all over the house, even in the bathrooms. When the Hardcore kids would come over they would slip requests in there, usually without their names, and we would find them later. Curly redhead was in college too and the two of them were forging a bond that had never been that close growing up. They were very different personalities, one the all-out star athlete, the other more content to help me with the foster kids and take sewing classes. Although the older was the pre-law major she had decided not to go to law school and was getting her masters in secondary ed./history. Alrighty then! Both my girls were going to be teachers! Kinda vindicated leaving it behind years ago for me. Two for the price of one, or something like that.

I was liking my life too much right then to care whether I ever saw the inside of a school building again in my life anyway. Deandra had taken a room in the basement. The one without the window. She didn’t seem to care. It felt cozy to her and I think it made her feel safer NOT to have a window and to have a lock on her door too. Security wise, she loved it. My husband, who is not only the Geek Squad, but Mr. Fixit (I always told him that home improvement was his real calling) built two rooms down there a number of years ago. Only one has a window, a nice large one, so we were able to use it for foster kids, but the other didn’t. The basement being walkout we knew we were firesafe either way. Fire safety is a huge issue in one’s home with the county and they check for fire extinguishers and smoke alarms regularly.

The three foster kids were excited about the day, the food, the festivity. This was their second Christmas with us (1996) and they were milking it for all it was worth. The day went well and by evening Marine wanted to phone home to see what was going on and whether his stepfather was there. He called and his mom answered. They were arguing. He didn’t want to go home if the stepfather was there. She said he was gone for a while.

He asked me, for the first time, if he could spend the night. We had one bed left in the house (believe it or not). Junior had bunk beds in his room. I drove him over to his house to get some things, and he asked me to go in with him. I didn’t want to but got out anyway. The submissive mom was standing there dull faced and subordinate. The stepfather WAS there. Had he just gotten there or was he there all along and the mom had not been honest? We knew he was there before we went in the house. His car was in the driveway. Marine thought the latter was the reason. I had no opinion. I just sat down at the kitchen table, kept my mouth shut and waited for Marine to get some clothes for the night.

The yelling started. It was loud and it was mean. I don’t remember what was said but I remembered being terrified of this man. Marine kept looking at me and had tears in his eyes. My big tough guy. Tears. I was getting angry now. The mother lion claws were coming out. Maybe his own mother couldn’t stand up for him, but I could, and I was MAD. I told Marine to get his things and let’s go.

The stepfather turned on me and yelled at me, right in my face. Made innuendos, snide remarks. This man that didn’t even know me. Had never seen me or met me before. I felt like I was facing a demon wrapped in skin. His words are gone now, but the scene is fresh in my mind. Whatever he said really got to me. I slammed the palm of my hand down on the table with a force I didn’t know was in me.

I stood up, and said to him, “HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO ME LIKE THAT!”

He just smirked. He had gotten my goat and he knew it. Demons just love to see you get all flustered.

I was shaking as I told Marine that he was welcome to move in with us and hurry up, I’ll be waiting in the car. I never planned on him moving in with us. I hadn’t even checked with my husband. I always check first.

As I walked out the door, the mom, lifting her voice from her normal quiet to just a slightly louder voice, probably her equivalent of yelling, said to me,

“You think you are so much better than me, don’t you? A better mom than me. Just because you are a Christian.”

I turned and I looked her straight in the eye. I felt so sorry for her right then. I wanted to hug her and tell her I wasn’t better than her, and I would help her, and……. I just couldn’t say what I was thinking right then. That evil man was staring at me, smirking at me, sizing me up to see just what I was made of, waiting for me to crack under the pressure. I just shook my head, turned around and walked out the door.

I got in my van. I was trembling. Ohhhhhhhh, I was so mad, so hurt to see those tears in the eyes of such an otherwise tough guy, so frustrated with the mom for not being able to see her way clear of her own need and pain and see what she was doing to her kids. I wanted her to peck her way out of this shell she had grown around herself and break free. Not only of this guy, but of her own self-hatred.

I started the car and turned the worship music up really loud. I started praying in tongues and in English. Marine came out with a garbage bag full of clothes. Yep, that’s how foster kids always come, isn’t it? With a garbage bag full of clothes. Not even a toothbrush. Technically, Marine and Deandra weren’t foster kids but now that they were both living in my house, free of charge, as far as the county was concerned, they didn’t even need a caseworker, did they? I was told later that the case had been closed and they would not reopen it unless I made the kids go back home. Nice. Real nice. I could feel myself getting to the point that I didn’t even want to deal with the county anymore. Jerks. Except for the babies…..I can’t quit now….if my babies come back, the one’s that left in 1995 come back, I have to be here. I have to stay certified. Ooooooo, I was so mad.

Okay, so now I’ve got SEVEN kids living at home. I put everything else out of my head and focused on one day at at time. Don’t make waves. With the county, with the church. Life was getting more hectic. A woman from the next town over, she and her husband, both were older Bible College students, called me. They had a (beautiful, redhaired, model-looking) fifteen year old who was causing them grief.

“Have I met you before?” I asked her on the phone.

“No.” she said, “but I’ve heard you take in troubled teenagers and my husband and I were wondering if you would take in ours.”

Ooooooooo……..Looooorrrrrrd……Jeeeeesuuuuuus. What is going on here? What is happening? Things are spinning out of control, Lord.

I told the woman as sweetly as I could that I really didn’t have another bed and that I usually only take kids through the foster care system, and that this other situation was very unusual, and that………. She was quiet at first and then she spoke. This was her stepdaughter and she was sick of her nonsense, and she wanted her OUT of the house.

I said, “Look, I really can’t take her into the house right now, but if you want to bring her to Hardcore Worship on Saturday nights, we can get to know each other. I don’t have a lot of time after school or on weekends but…..how ‘bout this…..if she gets to know me, and she likes me (I don’t do the force myself on teenagers thing), she can tell me when her study halls are, and you can write an excuse and I will pick her up a couple days a week and take her for hot chocolate for an hour. How ‘bout that? Is that okay?”

I heard a big breath on the other end of the phone. No, that wasn’t good enough. She really needed her out, O-U-T, and if I couldn’t take her they would have to look somewhere else.

All I could think of was……….your Bible schooling is more important to you than your very own husbands daughter. Why don’t you and/or him quit school for a while and focus on first things first? You will have all the training you need to bring others to Christ, but you will have lost your own flesh and blood.

I didn’t say that. Maybe I should have but I just didn’t think she would hear that right then. It’s that way with lot’s of people in ministry. They want to go to school to learn about the scriptures, get the ‘job’ in the church, the position, the recognition, Rev. or Pastor or Father in front of their name, but when it comes to applying it to real life……that is the hard part. That’s the humbling, breaking, putting someone else before yourself, part. That’s the part that can’t be memorized. That’s the part you can’t take a test for. That’s the part that takes intimate fellowship with the Holy Spirit to figure out.
Book learning is always easier. But real life, now, THAT is where the REAL education is.

I called the county. They put me in contact with the worker on the case. She said she would come out and meet with us. When she got to the house both of us were waiting at the dining room table. Deandra didn’t seem like she wanted to have this meeting at all and I was already upset that nothing had been done.

We talked and I got the distinct feeling that this caseworker had already made up her mind and was not planning on doing one thing about the situation. She spoke in slow, measured syllables, almost like I was a child and I might not understand what she was saying. If she felt forced to repeat herself this became more of an issue. “Youuu, reeeealiiizzze, Mrs…….” Arghhhh! This woman was driving me nuts!

My normally hyperkinetic speech patterns, made worse over the years by other women I was friends with who had the same problem, didn’t help the situation. I think she saw me as one of those manic-emotional basket case types and I was not liking the feeling I was getting from that. I intentionally slowed my speech and metered my words more slowly. It didn’t help. The damage was already done and I was not changing her opinion. Maybe there was no opinion to start with. Maybe she didn’t think all I thought she did, but just treated everyone this way. All I know is I was getting very upset but there was no where for the fury to go. I held it all inside.

One thing I can’t stand is being patronized or condescended to. I HATE THAT. I concede that it is possible I bring some of it on myself by my innate openness and the fact that I allow others to speak into my life if they want. It probably makes me vulnerable to people being that way toward me.

I also know that my hatred of it comes from my country club going, dance class attending, charm school, private school education, and Ivy League graduating parental background. I do not begrudge any of that. I think it serves me well, especially in public, so that in spite of my very middle class lifestyle, I have the ability to communicate effectively with all types of people. At the same time I have discovered, that the arrogance and self- involvement is something I can do without for the rest of my life. Yuck. I hope I treat everyone with the respect that I would like to be treated with, even people that others snub their nose at and even a bunch of wild and crazy teenagers. All I expect back in return is to be treated like I am an adult. Not some five year old who needs to be talked down to….or at. That is how this woman made me feel, or at least tried to, and I was miffed.

After she left I just blew out like a balloon that is blown up, and just before it is tied the air comes out. Whoooosh. I asked Deandra what this was all about and she told me that this woman had been coming over for MONTHS and had been told all this information and nothing had happened. She had nothing good to say about this woman and I was beginning to agree. I had gotten the clear indication that she was going to continue putting this on the back burner. People complain all the time that kids are taken too QUICKLY into foster care. Usually that is the people from whom the kids have been removed. It has been my experience that they are not removed quickly enough. Let’s face it, it costs money to have a child in foster care and that money comes from taxes. Believe it or not, the government IS trying to save money. Maybe in the wrong areas but they are.

I was not to be denied. I called the Senior Caseworker, a woman with similar speech patterns to mine (tee-hee) who I knew I could communicate with. She basically backed up her worker and I was beginning to get really frustrated. I had one more recourse, the top guy in charge. He is a soft-spoken, very caring man and I felt I might be able to get through to him. No such luck. I couldn’t believe this. I hit a brick wall at every turn. Was the issue that they didn’t believe the girl? Was the problem that they had no proof? That usually doesn’t matter in cases like this because abuse of this nature doesn’t leave bruises. They just get the kid out. Was it the fact that, although the family definitely had financial problems they were still just a touch too middle class to bother with? Is this why most of my foster kids come from other more rural and poor towns in my county and not mine?

Did they consider my town to be so ‘well-to-do’ compared with some of the other, even more obscure communities that dotted our large county area that they felt they had bigger fish to fry? Possibly all of those… or maybe none of those. I don’t know. All I know is that this was one screwed up girl and I wanted… no… I needed help.

Help was not to come. At least not in the way I wanted it to. When a child goes into foster care there are two big things that are perks for the child. One is a clothing allowance. This is money that must be accounted for by the foster parent to the state. There had been much abuse over this back in the early days of foster care, just after children were starting to move out from orphanages into private homes. This lasted for several decades even into the forties and fifties. Some unscrupulous foster parents were receiving money and using it to buy clothes for their own kids while the ‘fosters’ as they were called then, ran around in handmedowns, or they were using it for groceries for the family when the money was specifically set aside for clothing and there was a separate boarding payment anyway. For this reason, they tightened the rules around the 1970’s and we were required to keep receipts and logs of what we spent and how we spent it, as far as county money goes. While I understand the reason for this and completely agree with it, I found the paperwork tedious and a strain on my patience. Just give me the kid! Red tape bogs me down! Finally, my in house Geek Squad (he actually smiles at that distinction lest one think I am calling him names) took over the task and all I had to do was hand paperwork over as it came in the door. Phew. Deandra did not have decent clothes and she could have used this assistance in a big way. It was not forthcoming.

The other issue is counseling. Every child that comes into foster care is set up to receive some sort of counseling through one of the local mental health centers or through private doctors who were willing to accept the low Medicaid payments. Even though I have some horrendous ‘counseling stories’ I do think that most kids benefit from it. Without a case worker backing me up and forcing the child to make the mandatory meetings (caseworkers always hold more leverage because they are seen as the big fat boss and the foster mom is seen as the easily manipulated patsy who believes everything that comes out of the po’ baby’s mouth), it is almost impossible to get a child to face their issues. It’s hard, man. All that introspective stuff. Who wants to face that? Bringing up all the garbage, reliving it all over again, having to tattle, usually on ones own parents, not knowing how to deal with it, and not understanding the complexities of it….. like I said, it’s hard, man.

Deandra moved in. What could I do? What could I say? My heart would allow nothing less, but like I said, I needed another kid in the house like I needed a hole in the head. My second daughter was in college but living at home, Junior was still in high school and we had the older three foster kids (Nanny Girl, Senior Girl, and Farm Boy for those of you keeping track) who were 10 and 8 at the time who had some major behavioral issues that we dealt with on a daily basis.

She was a very quiet child but had a very rebellious side that was not apparent at youth group or camp. She was sneaky. I know most teenagers are to some extent but it is one of those things that just drives me nuts. I’m so open, almost to a fault, and so clear about explaining expectations and boundaries, that when I find out someone is sneaking around, deliberately disobeying, I have a hard time with that. I truly believe that not only did she need a safe place, she wanted a safe place. Yet she didn’t really know all that that entailed. The problem for her was that I am pretty eagle eyed. I keep a firm hand on everybody’s comings and goings.

Even though Deandra loved the security of the old-fashioned two parent, mother stays home and makes dinner, household, she was also used to having way too much time to roam around town, hang out with the wrong people and get herself into trouble. Yes, she had accepted Christ through the youth group and was coming to church, but she was not strong in her faith and needed much guidance which was not forthcoming from her mom and stepfather. She loved the security of our home but it was like coming into Fort Knox after being out on the pioneer prairie with no visible law and order.

Even though I knew that, but there was nothing I could do about it. I had already broken my rule about taking in older kids than my youngest, again. Junior was older than her but I never forgot that the three younger ones were my first responsibility and I couldn’t let her undo all the effort I had put into them.

School dances are a particular bugaboo with me. I don’t like them. I went to a couple when I was a teenager and didn’t like them then either. I let my oldest daughter go to them and didn’t like them then either. I just think they are a breeding ground for fighting, drugs, and other stuff that I’m just not interested in dealing with. I’ll let them go to a Christmas semi-formal if they have a date for that and we are dealing with the prom this year for Senior Girl which I’m not crazy about but we told her that she can go with the boy we have known for three years, and we will set some boundaries.

Deandra was big on school dances. She begged and pleaded and finally I gave in. I don’t know what she did but that night she got two guys fighting over her. She acted all scared and upset about it but it was evident that she was enjoying the attention and the self-esteem boost. That was it. Never again. School as a whole was becoming a problem. She was failing everything, hanging with the wrong kids, the guidance counselor was calling. Man, wasn’t five kids enough? What was I ever thinking that I could ever handle this?

Deandra had an older brother. He was in high school and coming to Hardcore Worship. After she moved in, he began coming over for dinner every night. That was a very fun and funny time. He was a big, tough guy, the one that went into the Marines that I talked about in an earlier post, but he had a soft side too. After Deandra moved out of their house he was left with only a younger step-sister at home with the Mom and Stepfather. Since the step-sister was the stepfathers daughter she didn’t take any of the abuse. All of it was falling on the Marine now since Deandra had moved out.

It was October when Deandra moved in and by Christmas my schedule was full. I was taking two evening classes at the Bible School on Thursday night, Youth Group on Friday night, Hardcore Worship on Saturday, morning and evening services at church on Sunday. By Monday I would run around cleaning up from the weekend and spend the rest of the day on the couch reading and with worship music going to calm my spirit and renew my mind. On top of all the phone calling from the teens and the cooking and laundry, I was at the end of me.

I did like dinner time though. Junior and Marine were hysterical every night. With dinner being the highlight of every day I spent more time cooking in anticipation of it. Deandra and her brother weren’t used to dinner at the table with candles and china so they were eating it up (pun intended). It didn’t matter what I made, they never complained and told everyone what a wonderful cook I was even though I am quite average. Not having had many friends over the years Junior was in his glory with all the commotion. The boys next door couldn’t believe all the ruckus and were saying things on the bus to Junior. The verse, “He set a table before you in the presence of your enemies” came to my mind.

It was obvious that the Mom had given up on her two oldest kids and they were now my responsibility. Even though Marine wasn’t living here, he was here every night for dinner and a lot of the weekend. When Christmas rolled around I wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. I told my husband that I felt we should spend the same on Deandra that we did on all of our other children. I was waiting for the wince but he agreed. Then I found out that Marine was going to be here for Christmas day too. Uh-oh. I took a deep breath and asked again. This time I caught a tiny wince but it was okay. I really don’t enjoy shopping and I did a lot that year. The cashier at Wal-Mart learned my name! I had gone to JC Penneys and bought both Junior and Marine new dress outfits for church. Khaki pants, a leather belt, a chamois shirt, dress socks and a tie. I knew my son had dress docksiders but Marine had nothing but his old scruffy sneakers. I was out of money. I had spent $150. on each child and it was all gone.

I heard the Lord. I don’t care what anyone says about how you can’t hear the Lord. I heard the Lord. I had prayed about getting Marine some shoes. I was in Wal-Mart, doing my last bit of shopping and I heard the Lord tell me to go to the manager of the shoe department. Tell him I work with teenagers and that I have one that needs new shoes. As usual I told the Lord all the reasons that I could not do that. Of course it was all fear.

I asked the Lord if there was some other way He could provide. No answer.

"But God"….no answer.

"OKAY THEN, I’ll go up and ask him!"

"Good girl”

He is a stubborn One.

I could feel my heart banging against my chest. I saw this guy and didn’t know if he was the manager of the shoe department or not but he had a name tag on that said Lee. I took a deep breath and without missing a beat, in my fastest speaking voice that can still be audibly understood, I put my hand out, introduced myself, told him my story and stopped.

I felt like such a dumb fool.

He looked straight at me and said, “Pick out whatever pair you want and when you get to the register tell them not to charge you. Tell them Lee told you that.”

I could feel my breath starting to come back but I could hardly speak. Flustered, I put my hand out and thanked him again.

“Thank you soooo much. You are such a blessing!” I said.

He nodded. “So are you”, he mumbled as he walked away.

He told me I could pick out any pair. I settled on what would be considered expensive for Wal-Mart, but cheap for a shoe store, shoe. I really liked them. It was pseudo suede looking, with shoelaces. Nice.

I went up to the register, paid for my other purchases and handed her the shoe box. I told her what Lee had told me. A cross look flashed across her face. I don’t run into too many of those at Wal-Mart. She questioned my integrity. So much for the honest face I was always told I had! I told her that Lee would explain it to her….she said yes, indeed, he would. She called back to the shoe department. Lee came up front and told her to ring them up at no cost. It was at that point that I began to wonder whether Wal-Mart was eating the cost or he was.

I could hardly contain myself when I got home. I had to be careful to tell only my husband and older daughter so that it wouldn’t get out. I was so happy. Not only that I got the shoes but that the Lord had told me to do it and I obeyed Him. I was learning. I’m still learning.

In the process of looking for a few youth group pictures in my scrapbook I found an old Hardcore Worship flyer that I made after that name started to be used. On the flyer I had written this quote from Corrie Ten Boom.

"If God sends us on stoney paths, He provides strong shoes"

I really liked that then and now. I thought it fit well with the story.

Hopefully the YG pictures will be in my gallery by this evening. I need help from the Geek Squad for that.

Camp was over and we were all back home now. Life continued it’s hectic pace. Kids were talking about and preparing to go back to school. While the summer had been more fun than I had ever expected to have at my age, I was anticipating getting my house deep cleaned, some time to myself, a minute to just sit and think and process. God was using me and I knew it. I still struggled with the inferiority complex that everyone else was more ‘spiritual’ than me, but God was breaking me out of that shell. The prophetic was coming faster, and much clearer. I was seeing pictures, uttering things that were so on that the person I was speaking to would just crumple in a heap before the Lord either in repentance, worship or both. Camp had been another growing experience. I had learned the ‘protocol’ of speaking publicly and God was using me that way, in addition to doing individual ministry.

More than the prophetic though, my real gift is in loving people. I know that. I just love people. All kinds of people. Even if I don’t like what the person stands for, who they are, I can look past that, and still love them.

I don’t care for what Hillary Clinton espouses and I am upset about the fact that she has never before lived in or cared much about my home state, but is using it now, for her own political gain. I didn’t vote for her for the Senate of New York and I wouldn’t vote for her for President now. That is my right and I’m taking it. Yet, I still love her. I have seen her on TV giving interviews and I find her intelligent, articulate, and head and shoulders above the guy she is married to as far as personal ethics. Sorry, all you Hillary haters out there. I like her as a person and I can love her with the love of the Lord. I know she has her flaws, her inconsistencies, her political jargonizing (another word I just made up unless you heard it somewhere else). But in reality, separated from the political reality of CNN or Fox News, even her own political reality in her head, she is a wife, an emotionally abused one at that, she is a mother, she is a woman, she is a person. I can understand all those things and look past the stuff I don’t agree with. Again, I didn’t say I would vote for her. Politically speaking, I wish she would just go away and bake cookies for Bill and wait on some grandchildren from Chelsea. She and I are so far on opposite sides of the abortion spectrum that I don’t know if we could ever find common ground on that.

People say that is only ONE issue, Connie, there are so many more that you need to consider. When one believes that abortion is downright murder, how does one look past it and care about anything else? You want me to care about the health care crisis, the Social Security fiasco, other issues of the political realm that people are so hyped up on and think are so all-fired important? I’m sorry, you hand me a dead baby, so to speak, lay that crumpled fetus in my lap, via TV, pictures, the internet, and force me to face the murder of millions of innocent, unborn children, when the murder of even one would send me reeling, a baby who will never have the chance to take a breath, and then you expect me to care about whether I am going to get some piddly Social Security check some day? God, help me! What has happened to us? Where are our priorities? Jesse Jackson said it in 1976, ‘what fabric of society will we have twenty years from now if we allow this injustice to continue’. It is twenty years later and I don’t have to show you the fabric of society that we have. It is in front of everyone of us everyday. Killing our children didn’t make life easier or better. It didn’t free us from the epidemic of child abuse. Quite the opposite. There are more abused children today than there were in the boomer years and we are killing at least half of them to start with. Child abuse has not stopped just because we are getting rid of so-called ‘unwanted’ children. It has increased.

And who made up that lie that they were unwanted anyway? I keep hearing about how it can take up to ten years to adopt a white, undrug-addicted, newborn. Where are they all? Don’t tell me white girls ain’t gettin’ pregnant. I won’t believe you. I KNOW they are. A lot of ‘em. I’ve worked with teenagers for the past fifteen years and have five of them still living at home. Where are the babies? In the ground, man, in the ground. Dust to dust.

I agree with Ted Kennedy. Can you BELIEVE THAT ONE? I agree with the elder statesman of the far left. Who knew? He said, in 1971, that he believes that people have the inherent right to be born, to live, to grow old, and to die and that the abortion law should not be adopted. Humph. Isn’t that just a kick in the pants. Well, okay, he changed his mind somewhere along the way but let’s face it, when you are in public life, kind of like on the blog, words can come back to haunt you.

God knows the hairs on our heads, He keeps track of the sparrows that fall, and you want me to just FORGET about the on going holocaust of our own children? Isn’t that what the world did when Hitler followed through on his plan? Why is that so different? He killed them after they were alive, we kill them before they get the chance. Oh, but, Connie, we are saving them from being a poor, unwanted, abused child. You liar. That is a lie from the pit of hell. They did not ask to be born and they did not ask to die. You just want to play God because you don’t want to be bothered with all the backbreaking work of life. Children are life. Abundant life. They require work, man, I know that….more than most. But they are worth it. You can bury yourself in your new Porsche or Jaguar if you want to but it’s only going to rust. The one with the most toys wins? Sorry, heaven doesn’t take toys. Heaven doesn’t care about any of our measly, inconsequential, ignorant little pastimes and possessions. You are strutting around with that gold chain, feelin’ like Mr. Who-knows-what T, and the PAVEMENT is gold up there, baby! They are WALKING on what you spent a whole month’s paycheck to buy for your best girl for Valentines Day today! People are all that go to heaven after you die. People. People made in the image and likeness of God Almighty. Oh, Connie, I don’t believe in heaven or hell. You will, honey, you will. I promise.

If you ask any unwanted child who has ever lived in my house, they would say that they were GLAD that they were born. They were glad they had the chance to live. So what that life isn’t going so good right now, life gets better. The grave is never full. The Bible says that and Hitler proved it.

If you are so all fired up to save the children, WHY, in God’s name, is the county begging for more foster homes? If you can’t deal with “the system” why aren’t you out there, on your own, helping that family down the street, reaching out to them, bringing them food and clothes, visiting the mother and being her friend, as a way to show them you care, so that they will allow you to show them even more than that, like how to raise healthy adults?

I’ll tell you why, if you really want to know, and aren’t just reading my blog for something to do today.

It is because we are LAZY, SELF-INVOLVED, FOOTBALL WATCHING, HILLARY HATING, POLARIZED, SELFISH IGNORAMUSES, who have nothing better to do than talk about the issue and not DO anything about it. It is so much EASIER, so much more CONVENIENT to just kill them before they are born so we don’t have to deal with them for the next twenty or so years.

Oh, I feel so sorry for you. You have so much to do. So much on your plate. If someone was thinking about murdering YOUR child you would suddenly find some time, huh? This argument, I have heard it so many times I want to vomit, “well, Connie, I would NEVER abort my own child, but I think women should have the right to choose about their own”.

Okay, let’s see, what you are really saying is that your ‘little precious’ is more important to you than their snot-nosed, diaper pooping, hyperactive little bra….oh, I mean, ‘little precious’ so, you wouldn’t consider doing that to yours, but you will allow others that right so that you don’t have to deal with those little troublemakers in YOUR upstanding neighborhood. Whatever. One of the best friends my son has ever had was one of those town troublemakers. He was in foster care at an early age because his own father did unspeakable things to him. He is all grown up now, with two beautiful children. Should he have been aborted?

These same people that are so all fired up about abortion rights are the very same that picket outside prisons when a murderer is on death row awaiting the death penalty. Okay, now THAT makes sense. We’ll kill the innocent ones, but we’ll let the murderers live. yeeesh.

Yeah, blogging about it, incessantly asking rhetorical questions like, ‘what about the life of the mother?’, which is almost never the case, is just so much easier. When I sat down this morning to write I didn’t know this was going to come out, but now that it has I am not going to apologize and I’m not takin’ it back. It’s the truth. No one on the blogstream, no one in my life, not even my mother, who spent twenty years working for Planned Parenthood, not even my sisters, who won’t bring it up with me because they don’t want to hear it, can take this truth away from me. It is true and it is real and I’m sick of people talkin’ it and not walkin’ it. If you can’t walk it, or don’t want to walk it, okay. Just don’t jargonize about it. Life is too short, and there is too much work to do.

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In October, the girl from the troubled home who had come to camp on a scholarship (she was actually placed in my cabin which pleased both of us), was having some even more difficult problems at home. It was a perfect autumn evening and the youth were hanging at the local Christian coffee shop after youth group and I was there, as always. Another girl comes running in, breathing hard, trying to tell me about Deandra. “You have to help, Connie, you HAVE to.” Well, what was I supposed to do? My heart wanted to help, but this was out of my jurisdiction. Way out. At that point, Deandra was coming up Main Street from her house. I went outside the shop, saw her coming and walked toward her. She was crying, not sobbing really, but seething with hurt and anger. Something about her stepfather, she said. Something she wasn’t fully explaining, but I got this real bad feeling. I knew I was in over my head. You wouldn’t think a foster parent would say that. But foster parents do not normally deal with cases outside the system. We don’t do the social work part. We just do the ‘bake the brownies, make up the bed, set another chair at the the table part’. We wait for the “we need you” call and respond. This was not that. This was coming from somewhere else and I wasn’t quite sure how to handle it.

She talked. I listened. I asked questions. She was in clear and present danger. This was not a slap on the face or even a punch to the stomach. This was more, much more. I didn’t have the whole story but my mind was spinning and I felt like I was going to get sick. I didn’t know what to do but between talking to her and the three or four girls who were surrounding me, begging me to intervene, I didn’t feel like I could just do nothing. I was vaguely familiar where her house was, but I had never been there. The two of us walked slowly back to her home, leaving the raucous crowd and the cluster of concerned girls. The whole way I was frantically trying to figure out what I was going to do, to say, when we got there.

Her stepfather was gone, THANK GOD. I didn’t have to deal with HIM. I was faced with this woman, so sweet and submissive, so soft-spoken, yet so clearly unable to deal with the situation at hand. I introduced myself and slowly began to ask questions hoping everything would just come out and I wouldn’t have to get too specific. She was honest, well, as honest as she could be considering how much denial she was in. Finally, she just threw her hands up in the air, and in a snippy tone, albeit a soft, snippy tone, she said, “Well, I just don’t know WHAT to do with Deandra! She is such a problem!”

Uh-oh, I realized we were going in the wrong direction with this. This was Deandra’s fault? This was Deandra’s problem? How was I supposed to respond to THAT?

I needed another kid in my house like I needed a hole in the head, but I took a deep breath and said, “Well, maybe Deandra can come over for the night and we’ll talk about this tomorrow and see what can be done. Would that be good? Would that work for you?” She breathed an audible sigh of relief. “That’s fine”, she said curtly. I knew she wasn’t mad at me for intervening. On the contrary, she was very happy. Someone was actually taking this problem off her weary hands.

Deandra came home with me and I made her a bed on the couch. It was getting late and I didn’t feel like any purpose would be served by staying up all night talking. I wasn’t sure I could handle the truth any better than the mom. I knew the truth would come out at some point but I didn’t want to face it. Morning came and went, we hadn’t really talked yet, but there was a tension in the air. This girl had been in my cabin for the whole week of camp and I had known her for at least six months at this point. Yet I didn’t really know her, did I? As we began to slowly ease our way into talking about the problems at home, it all kept coming back to the stepfather.

I was getting that sick feeling again. So, sue me for being sheltered, but I had never even heard of such a thing until after I was married and I watched the Phil Donahue show. Back then I just turned off the TV because the subject was so distressing….forgive me, Lord, so gross to me, that I didn’t want to hear about it. I knew there were verses about it in the Bible, verses condemning it, but I didn’t want to read those either. Those verses, the people on Donahue, the subject matter, weren’t any part of my life. I didn’t have to think about it as long as it was just a subject being discussed on television. And when it was discussed I could just tune it out and not listen. I never knew about the girl that lived next door to me growing up. I never knew why she was so screwed up all the time. I didn’t find out until she killed herself a few years ago on her 50th birthday. It was right there, living next door to me, but I never knew. Now it was up in my face, a girl I knew and cared about, a family in my town. There was no way of getting around it. No way of getting over it. No way of getting under it. I would just have to go through it.

Suddenly, in the second it takes to exhale a breath, it came out. The words just came tumbling out like red wine spilling on the rug. There it was. And like wine on the rug, there is no chance of ever cleaning it up. You can get some of it. Maybe make the rug look okay, again, but the stain is always there, just a little harder to see. You can’t buy a new rug. The rug is here to stay. You can’t get rid of the stain, even with continued washing, scrubbing, frantic shampooing. It never comes fully out. You can’t fix a stain like this. You can put a throw rug over it. That’s what most people do. Just throw a rug over the stain so that it doesn’t show anymore. It’s still there but we don’t have to look at it. We can pretend that it is not there and that the person who spilled the wine didn’t really spill it. But there is no getting rid of it. Her soul, the part of her that deals with life, people, her own self, has been changed. Forever.

Please don’t get me wrong here, I don’t mean to say that it would have been better for her not to have said anything. Just the opposite. Not saying anything only allows this thing to fester and get worse. Possibly be acted out in her life in some other fashion. Yet, I know that this is not one of those things that you can go to the doctor and just get a bandage for. It’s too big, it’s too pervasive. There is no surgery that will correct it. Counseling is good, counseling is very good, but like a soldier returning from war never forgets what he saw, what he did, what he experienced, this girl never would either. She was a youth, but her youth was gone. It had been stolen from her. By a man that she had grown to trust. By a mother who couldn’t deal. By a county that wouldn’t, or couldn’t act. By a society that didn’t want to know anymore than whether Hillary could handle Bill’s infidelity, and why wasn’t she just in the kitchen making cookies for him anyway.

There was no taking these words back. I knew too much now. Too much, now, to go on about my happy life without a care in the world. I asked her what she wanted to do about it. She just shrugged her shoulders. Similar to the response I had gotten from the mom the night before. Do you want me to call the county? Do you want to stay here for a little while? I knew she couldn’t go home. That much I KNEW. She grasped at the idea of staying at the house like a drowning man grabbing a pole. It came out that the county WAS, indeed, involved. They already had a caseworker? And this child had not been removed? How could this be? I was furious. I could hardly control my indignation. I told her that I would call them and find out what was going on.

In spite of the problems, I was still having fun and growing in the Lord. My ‘hearing’ that I mentioned in a former post was growing stronger. I was praying more, studying the Word more and spending more time just all out praising God. So were the kids.

My foster kids were enjoying all the hullabaloo and while not directly involved with the worship group or the youth, per se, enjoyed the attention lavished on them when kids came over.

And come over they did. As spring break proved there was no stopping this

My birthday was on a Saturday in early April. My husband asked me to stay home from youth group on the Friday before. I was pretty oblivious. I didn’t really know what was going on and he just said he wanted to spend the evening with me knowing that the next day would be consumed. The kids had planned a surprise party for me but I never knew. Friday afternoon I got a call from a girl in the next town asking if I would pick her up for the group. I told her I wasn’t going but that I would pick her up and she could find a way home. By the time we got to the community center my van was crammed with all these other kids that needed a ride that she didn’t tell me about on the phone.

My favorite saxophone player, the Kirk Cameron look-a-like, the one who together with his girlfriend followed me from swimming to roller skating to bowling, was sitting shotgun when I dropped them off. As they all piled out of the car, he just sat there.

“Have fun tonight, D.”, I said. (bet you wouldn’t believe me if I told you I really called him D!)

“Con, you’re sure you can’t come tonight?”

“No, I have to go home. Things to do.”

“It won’t be the same without you here”

“Thanks! I wish I could stay.”

“Can’t you ask your father to let you come out with us?”

WHAT? I thought he was kidding or that I had heard wrong. I turned so that I was fully facing him. He was looking out the front window but when I turned he looked at me. His face looked so young, so innocent. So...like a kid.

Slowly, deliberately, I said, “D, you KNOW that the man I live with IS NOT my father. He is my HUSBAND.”

His face shifted like he had just come out of a fog. “Oh yeah, yeah, I know, Con, I knew that. Just kiddin’ ya.

He smiled. I smiled. He got out of the car. I sat and wondered what that was all about.

What I realized was that I had become so much one of them that the line was blurred. Not that I had done anything morally or ethically wrong, but that we had entered this netherland where young and old, male and female, didn’t exist. The worship we had experienced, the presence of God that we had laid hold of, had broken down barriers. It reminded me of the way heaven was going to be. All of us there, with the Lord, no divisions, no generation gaps. They still called my husband Mr. C. I was never Mrs. C. I wasn’t Juniors Mom, or Sister Connie anymore either. I was Connie, Con, Conster. I was one of them. I had never been one of anything like that, even when I was younger. I was 25 years older than the oldest kids there and I had never forgotten that. But they did. I chuckled about it at the time. It would stick with me though. I wasn’t quite sure what I thought about that.

There was another evening I got a phone call. The kids were getting together at a nearby house to hang out. One of the kids called. They wanted me to come over. I told them that I couldn’t come that night, we were having a family night. They practically begged me, telling me that they were playing Jailhouse Break, some kind of tag game that involved hanging from trees or some such thing. They felt SURE that I would just LOVE that game and, again, ’it won’t be the same without you’.

What would make any teenager think for one minute that a forty something, overweight, klutzy, woman would be interested in playing a game called Jailhouse Break? God had challenged all generational gaps. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. But I finally started to get a revelation why someone had made the remark, “She just wishes she was a teenager again”. It wasn’t that I WANTED to be a teenager again, heavens!, go back there? Forget it! But I WAS having fun, and I didn’t want it to end just because it was unusual for a middleaged woman to have a blast with a bunch of kids. I made a decision, right there and then, that I would never allow myself to forget who I was, how old I was, where I came from, and what my purpose was.

The kids mostly listened to Christian music. However, we had a segment of guys who listened to what they called “Hardcore Christian music”. They talked about it all the time and after worship was over on Saturdays would beg me to let them put it on. I didn’t really like much of it. It wasn’t bad, just not my style. There was a worship night where no girls showed up. There were about twenty boys. No girls. I never did find out what happened to them that night. Like I said, it would appear God was raising up the guys. One of them turned to me and asked,

“Where are all the girls?”

“Well, I don’t know! But....we got the Hardcore!”

They loved THAT! I had hit the spot. From that point on “Connie’s Worship” was never called that again. They were The Hardcore. Even when the girls were there, no matter who else showed up, they were forever thus, The Hardcore. Even now, when people in town talk about that time period, everyone knows what The Hardcore was. Who it was. What it meant.

Daughter no. 1 was graduating from college and we left for the weekend for the ceremonies. The kids had been told that there would be no worship that week but a couple of them wanted to know if they could come to the house when we got home around 3 on Sunday afternoon. I told them that would be okay. Two kids did not show up. Thirty kids showed up. We live on the corner as you enter our neighborhood, and before we even rounded the bend we saw kids everywhere, all over the yard, all over the driveway, all over the street. They were shooting hoops, playing soccer, and just walking up and down the sidewalk. One of the older boys was sitting on the front stoop reading the Sunday paper from our door. They actually let out a cheer when they saw us and swarmed the car. My husband had to wave them off so he could pull up the driveway. I don’t really remember the rest of the day. I assume we had dinner, I think we watched a movie. The kids were just happy to be all together.

As summer approached I was encouraging the kids to consider coming to camp. The youth pastor asked and he didn't have to beg this time. I was psyched and ready. Every week when I saw the kids I urged, coerced, and downright begged them to come. Many of them did. There was one girl, from a troubled home, who wanted to come but didn't have the money. I called the youth pastor and asked if the church could cover her. He said yes! Maybe there was hope for the two of us after all!

I figured that if I had had so much fun at camp, and was having so much fun with these kids, having both together in the same place was going to be awesome. It was. I had learned from the year before that the counselors liked to work with their kids to decorate their dorm or cabins to add more festivity to the week and to win recognition from the leaders. I had felt bad that I hadn’t known about that the year before but I was prepared now! This year I bought a long roll of banner paper and printed a Bible verse in large bubble letters along it. I had the kids help me fill in the letters with markers and I hung it encircling the whole outside of the cabin for all to see. I had prayed that I would receive the same cabin as the year before and I did.

Daughter no.2 returned as a counselor. I was given Senior camp again. Junior was there as an older camper and the three foster kids were in Junior camp. This year as we came into camp, did the mandatory staff meetings and slept that night waiting for the kids to come there was no frustration and no fear.

There was only the anticipation that my Hardcore kids were coming, and we were going to have a B-L-A-S-T! At sometime around the middle of the week, my voice already cracking from having too much fun, I was just overcome by the Spirit of the Lord. I stood in the middle of the campground and yelled at the top of my voice,

“I JUST LOVE THE PRESENCE OF GOD AT CAMP!”

Fifteen kids came running from all directions and yelled, “YEA, ME TOO!”